Clinton News-Record, 1971-08-26, Page 4Editorial commeat
Who's subsiclizin*g whom
There's something downright hilarious
about a huge metropolitan daily
newspaper righteously reprimanding "that
city slicker, New Democratic Leader
Stephen Lewis" for spreading "myths" in
his farm policy.
Mr. Lewis expressed concern over the
plight of the small family operated farm
and proposed to change it by more
subsidies, tax exemptions and by lowering
the cost of farm machinery.
The paper might have wondered if
these policies would really work, but
instead it chose to lecture Mr. Lewis on
the real situation down on the farm., as if
the editorial board of the Toronto Globe
and Mail was an expert on the problem of
farmers.
So it dug deep in its files (or its waste
•basket) and drew out a dusty report or
two and declared pompously that
everyone agreed the family farm was
dying and government should help it die a
quiet, comfortable and swift death.
They might even find many who
agreed with them there but when they go
on and ask another question they raise the
hackles of anyone ever associated with
farming,
"Does Mr. Lewis," they ask, "honestly
think that urban taxpayers wilt ever again
permit the kind of rural subsidization that
Tame that tiger
The provincial government's attempts
at growth planning on a province-wide
basis are doomed to failure, but let's hope
the government is more successful in its
attempts to control growth in the large
metropolitan areas.
Government plans call for a zone
around Metro Toronto in which no large
urban growth would be allowed. Treasurer
D'arcy McKeough last week gained many
enemies when he enforced this policy and
killed plans for the Century City project
which would have seen a new city of
35,000 people right smack-dab in the
middle of this zone.
There is no doubt that this policy wilt
gain the government enemies among the
developers, .-land speculators and the
growth-is-great politicians of Toronto who
would like the city to grow until it
reaches Hudson Bay. But for the good of
the people who live in the city and in the
province in general, someone must tame
the tiger of growth in Toronto before
everybody suffers.
For instance, one real estate man in
Toronto predicted recently that in 10
years the cost of an average home in
Toronto would be $75,000 and that only
a few could afford their own home.
Already few can afford a home in the city
where a building lot alone costs between
$15,000 and $20,000.
Toronto went from being the North
American city with the largest proportion
keeps inefficient farmers on small poor
farms where they serve neither themselves
nor the country well?"
Now wait a minute! If the farmer were
as ruthless as the Globe and Mail or many
of its businessmen readers, it would hike
up the cost of its product in the market
for everything the market would bear.
Those marginal farmers would be able to •
make a living and the big farmers would
get rich quick.
Because food is one product everyone
needs, and, for the first time ever, farmers
have some of the power they' need to ,do
just that through their marketing boards.
Urban people bark about the high
inflation now, but its nothing to what it
may be if some farmers get their way.
Or, if people like the Globe and Mail
get their way and drive huge numbers off
the land, large corporations may be able
to control food production to the extent
they can set their own prices much the
same way the big Toronto newspapers set
their own prices. As Murray Gaunt, M.P.P.
for Huron said recently, "Just listen to
the screaming then."
If Ontario farmers spread manure as
heavily as the Globe and Mail spreads
myths about farming, they could feed the
whole world.
of the population living in single family
dwellings in 1950 to the point today
where no other city on the continent has
so many of its people living in high-rise
apartments.
Some of those living in high-rises are
there because of preference, but the
majority are there because they have no
other choice. They haven't the money for
a down-payment on a home and probably
couldn't carry the high mortgage
payments even if they did.
No studies have properly assessed the
emotional problems of children growing
up in apartment buildings where they
have no proper areas to play, But Toronto
is so committed to high-rises now that
even if someone proved that high-rise
living was definitely harmful to children,
nothing could be done for years.
In addition, the galloping urban growth
of the Golden Horseshoe from Toronto to
Niagara Falls is quickly gobbling up some
of the most productive farmland in the
province.
Thus, the government doesn't have
much choice but to attempt the
unpopular task of limiting the greedy
growth of the biggest-is-best boosters in
the huge urban area and channel growth
into other selected areas. In this they
should have our complete support even as
we fight at the same time against their
attempts to impose huge regional
government units on our rural areas.
Trees are for the birds
'*4
.4*
From The Camp Borden Citizen
Dad in defeat
hat's new at Haroaview?
A member of the Canadian Weekly Newspaper Association,
Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association and the Audit Bureau
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Published every Thursday at
the heart of Huron County
Clinton, Ontario
Population 3,475
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4 Clinton News-Record, Thursday, August 26, 1971
For years I have been a
tree-loVer. Not that I knew
anything about them, or ever
planted any. But I did know the
common varieties, And I did
have a feeling that they were
something special in a world
steadily growing more ugly, I
had what you might call the
"only God can make a tree"
syndrome. There was something
mystic about trees. I have
written ecstatic -eolumhs about
the trees around our place: the
matronly maples; the
magnificent oaks; the towering
spruce; the virginly elms; the
lilacs; the single butternut,
I have sat in my backyard and
Watched them by the hour,
deeply moved by the human
qualities I gave them. Even that
dirty great cedar that drips
Mucus or something all over the
clothesline.
I have been fascinated by the
clunking of acorns falling, by the
sweet, longing Whispers of my
two elms, by the muttering of
the dowager maples, by the
solitary arrogance of my spruce,
Which I have to crawl under to
get into my tool-Shed,
But I'm beginning to have
doubts, like a priest who has
been swept away by something
he doesn't quite 'understand, and
then discovers that there's
something rotten in Denmark. If
rot in his own backyard.
That snarl you can't quite
Lear outside my windoe, is a
o=', sew, The operator It;
hacking up one of those
brooding oaks which came
crashing down during
yesterday's summer storm,
cutting telephone, hydro, and
indispensable of indispensables,
the TV cable wire, both for
myself and my next door
neighbour.
All get out of that is a bill
for $103 and 12 bucks worth of
fireplace wood, too green to do
anything but smoulder.
I'd just got back from a long
drive in 90 degree heat, lugged in
all the junk from the car, and
settled in the backyard with a
cold drink and the evening paper
when nature took one of her
whims.
For a few minutes, it was
enjoyable. The wind came up.
The lawn chairs went flying. The
acorns rattled, and leaves and
twig hurtled down on me. I
even went in and called the girls
to come out and enjoy the
storm.
Then the trees started to
twist and dance. Even the
mighty oaks were writhing like
tormented creatures. I love
storms, but when the rain came I
dashed for shelter.
I'd suddenly remembered 'a
storm at the cottage, when I was
a kid. Same Thing. Purple sky.
Dead calm. Sudden wind of
cyclone force that knocked over
giant pines like toothpicks, and a
torrent of •rain. One 80.fobt pine
snapped 'about half-way up and
smashed through the roof of the
cottage.
It wasn't so bad this time, but
one of my oaks, With a girth of
about 40 inches, lay there like a
stricken bull, It had destroyed a
fence, several Smaller trees.
Fortunately our neighbours had
got the kids inside before the
real fury of the wind broke, and
no one was hurt.
This morning I talked to the
hydro man who 'was stringing
new lines. He said he and his
Mates had worked all through
the night, in a driving rain, and
laconically remarked that it
wasn't much fun.
But to get back to trees. They
provide shade and they're pretty
to look at. What else? They
shower you with unwanted
leaves in the fall, 'They suck up
all the juice and prevent you
having a decent lawn.
My two virginal elms have
been raped by the Duteh disease
and look just like a couple of
gentle old maids who have been
raped. It will cost $200 to have
them buried.
My giant spruce is uprooting
my garage at a rate of about two
inch& each year.
My cedar (it must be from
Lebanon; I've never seen such a
gawky thing in Canada) is little
but a rendezvous for mating
squirrels,
It would take wild horses to
make me cut them all down, but
Thu beginning to think that
perhaps trees are for the birds..
This will be mainly about the
problem of a man who is afraid
of horses and has children who
adore the beasts, but perhaps I'd
better preface it with A
Sweeping Generality, to wit:
"There comes a terrible time in
every father's life when his
offspring begin to assert a
supremacy over him in a variety
of ways, both physical and
mental."
This usually happens when
they're in their `teens and it calls
for considerable adjustment on
the part of the old man.
It is not, of course, a new
thing. I have absolutely total
recall of the first time I pinned
my father in a playful wrestling
match, a triumph which, while I
sat heavily on his chest, caused a
flood of love for him in his
humiliation (as if somehow,
mysteriously, we vete parting)
and now, on the far side of
paradise, I've had to learn to
take it as he did.
The adjustment can be either
a gentlemanly concession or, as I
have been attempting, a delaying
process through cheating.
The first day that my girl
Judy aced me nine times in a
tennis match I began hollering
"Out!" If I am challenged by Jill
or Jenny to a swimming race out
to the raft and back I have no
hesitation in laughingly pulling
them under water if there teems
a likelihood that they're going to
beat me as, nine time out of ten,
they will.
I think it best, you see, to
give in ungraciously, 'without
actually drowning them, and this
is my policy in the increasing
number of tests that every father
must endure,
With horses, unhappily, I
have no defence, ethical or
otherwise. Oh, I can dreaM, of
course. Often do, in fact. I see
Myself vaulting lightly to the
back of some magnificent
animal—a strawberry roan, as I
imagine it — and going leaping
Over nine-foot hedges While my
little girls gasp and squeal with
pride, But since I make it a
practice of never getting closer
than 40 feet to horses the
chances for this performance
would seem to be remote.
It is about the only thing now
that would work since my gals
became mad for nags--so much
so, in fact, that when the oldest
one entered her first,
competition, something called
beginners' equitation, she and a
steed named Blue Boy walked
off with first prize.
This alone caused me to lay
myself wide open for contempt
for while the other fathers were
striding forward manfully to
congratulate their girls as they
rode from the ring, making a
great show of patting the horses,
I was executing a wide, circular,
out-flanking manoeuvre so that I
could shout a word of praise
while Still keeping two
barbed-wire Fences between
myself and Blue Boy, a fierce
animal'if ever I saw one.
In fact, it was a horse very
much like Blue Boy, a hairy
beast with the unlikely name of
Wilma who, on my first ride,
kept swinging its head around
and biting at my legs, I'm not
likely to forget those
six-inch-long fangs snapping at
my lily-white flesh or my instant
decision that I wouldn't ever
again be caught dead within
range of them or any like them,
It's not my intention to
revoke this decision merely to
remain a hero to girls who have
developed 'an affection for Such
great, loathsome, old—fashioned
creatures.
I have to admit, of course,
that my girls have been very
decent about this little streak of
yellow up my spine, but, as
every father knows, there's
nothing quite so despieable 'as a
daughter being decent,
"Horses won't bite you,
silly," they kept telling me,
looking around furtively to be
sure there were no eavesdroppers
of their own vintage. "You just
have to let the horse know who's
boss. 'They sense when you're
nervous, silly, so all you have to
do is let the horse know you're
not,"
"Oh, I know that." I
countered. "I can convince
horses I'm not nervous, but can I
convince them I'm not terrified?
And stop tailing me 'silly' or
y.
lock myself in my room and cry
into my pillow."
It's no good telling them
about, Wilma.
"HotseS aren't the tattle as
they were in those old days."
the new champion assured me,
toying suavely with her riding
crop, and that's that.
So much for my problem. I
don't care particularly whether
or not I can convince a horse
that I'm admirable, but — boy!
--I'd sure like to keep those girls
fooled a little longer.
The Goderich Laketown
Band directed by Charles
Kalbfleisch of Varna played a
concert for the residents on the
lawn at Huronview on Monday
evening, Harvey Cutt of
Huronview, a former resideht of
Goderich, thanked the band on
behalf of the residents.
Mrs. Grace Pym led a
singsong and introduced the
program at the August birthday
party provided by the tlimville
Women's Institute on
Wednesday afternoon,
The program included a piano
duet by Joan and Elaine Pym;
musical numbers by Susan, Gail
and Debbie Cooper; Judy and
Cheryl Parsons; dance numbers
by Tracey Coward; and
accordion selections by Mrs,
Phillip Hohn. Gifts were
presented to the 13 residents
having August birthdays and
lunch was served, A former
"nnol
10 YEARS AGO
For the first time the
Students Council of Clinton
District Collegiate Institute will
conduct a book store from the
stockroom on the main floor of
the school, starting, Thursday,
August 24.
The Clinton Concert Band
will hold a tag day on Saturday,
August 26, to raise funds to pay
expenses to the Waterloo
Festival Parade on Saturday,
September 9. Support of the tag
day will be much appreciated,
for participation in the Waterloo
event is a big step for the band
and an honour for the town of
Clinton.
Vacation Bible School at
Ontario Street United Church
entertained mothers at an open
house Friday, with closing
exercises and presentations of
certificates.
15 YEARS AGO
Flower fanciers throughout
Clinton and the district
combined efforts on Saturday to
transform the Council Chamber
in the Town Hall here .into a
bower of beauty on the occasion
of the annual flower show put
on by the Clinton Citizen's
Horticultural Society.
Hensel' Kinsmen expect to
serve 4,000 people at their
annual bean festival to be held in
liensall on Labor Day,
September 3.
Five hundred and sixty
pounds of beans will be used,
120 pounds of salt pork, 700
pounds of cabbage, five bushels
of tomatoes, three bushels of
cucumbers, six crates of celery,
50 pounds of coffee and 75
gallons of chocolate milk.
25 YEARS AGO
A valuable sun-dial
disappeared from the lawn of
Rev. R.M.P. Buteers' residence,
Rattenbury St. East, Wednesday
evening. As it weighed about
200 pounds, it must have taken
more than one man to lift it.
The sun-dial was valued partly
for sentimental reasons,
Hockey talk was very much
in the air at a social gathering at
the home of Mr. and Mrs. Frank
McEvan, Huron St., Friday
evening last in honour of Jack
(Dickiej Duckworth, popular
member of Clinton Colts
Hockey team, whose marriage to
Miss Shirley Turner, took place
recently.
Council received a letter from
the Lord's Day Alliance,
pointing out that it was illegal
for sewage work to be done on
Sundays, except in an
emergency. The Mayor said lie
would speak to the contractor.
40 YEARS AGO
The three day carnival put on
by the members of St. Joseph's
Church, Clinton, was brought to
a successful close yesterday
evening by a dance in the new
church hall, the music being
supplied by the HensalI
Orchestra,
The Boys' Band, an
organization in operation less
than a year, gave a concert in the
Library Park on Sunday evening
member of the Elimville
Women's Institute, Mrs, Brock
of Huronview expressed the
appreciation of the residents.
The Silver Strings, a group of
young musicians from the
Winthrop area entertained on
Thursday Family night with
Faye Dalton piano, Linda
Godkin violin, Beth McNichol,
banjo and Ray McNichol,
electric guitar. Marshall Stewart
thanked the young people for a
fine program.
after the church services.
Schools open on Tuesday
next, September 1, No
holidaying until after Labour
Day.
Some boys caught a newt in
the Clinton pond to-day. It was
a lively little reptile, but smaller
than a tufted speciman caught
earlier this year.
55 YEARS AGO
Why don't you learn to
swim? Not that there's much
necessity for the art in an inland,
but on the principle of Safety
First, if you cannot breast the
waves and have no desire to
learn, take the old-time advice
and "hang your clothes on a
hickory limb and don't go near
the water." Of course this does
not apply to bath tub
evolutions. These should be
maintained annually whether
you are a swimmer or not.
Two cases of infantile
paralysis have developed among
a group of Indians living about
six miles from Clinton. They are
Muncey Indians who have been
employed pulling flax, The two
patients are ;children.
75 YEARS AGO
This week the Doherty Organ
Co. have shipped some thirty
organs for exhibition at the
Toronto Industrial Fair. Mr.
Sherlock, the firm's general
representative, will be in charge.
Mr. W. Doherty and Mr. W.
Manning will go down next
week. The factory will be in the
charge of J.P. Doherty.
Report has it that a match
between Seaforth and Mitchell
lacrosse clubs last Thursday was
one of the roughest of the series.
Some of the Seaforth boys, it is
said, were badly scalped.
Mitchell won the game and now
the two clubs are a tie for the
championship.
The harvest home picnic,
under the auspices of the Home
Circle, the Hullet Grange and
the Londesboro Creamery Co.,
will be held in "Belmont Park,"
a half mile east of Londesboro,
to-day.
Letter
to the
Editor
The Editor:
On the morning of Sunday,
August 15, a car slowed down in
front of our farm, the driver
opened his door and threw out a
helpless little white, kitten onto
the middle of the road. The
kitten crawled off the road, only
to get an unfriendly welcome
from our dog, By the time we
got to it the poor thing was
shaking.
Contrary to the belief of
most town people, the majority
of farmers already have more
cats than they know what to do
with. We have about half a
dozen females and heavens only
knows how many little ones up
in the straw.
I wonder just what a
thoughtless person expected a
tiny kitten to do, It would have
been more humane to kill it than
leave it to starve to death.
Fortunately, not everyone is so
heartless. We took the kitten to
our other barn where there is an
old cat and a litter of kittens,
hoping that she would take care
of it too,
I hate to think how many
dogs and cats are just left on the
country road for either the
elements or the farmer to deal
with.
I appreciate the use of your
paper to express these
sentiments. I only hope that the
person that left that kitten and
any others who have done
similar acts of cruelty read this
and maybe — just maybe, they
will thihk twice before doing it
again.
-KEITH 1.44 ROULSTON — Editor
J. HOWARD AITKEN —"General Manager
1
Sincerely,
Suzanne Vodden,
Kneel or sit low in a
Canoe, If upset, HANG
ON to the canoe until
help arrives,
THE CLINTON NEW ERA Amalgamated THE HURON NEWS-RECORD
Established 1865 1924 Established 1881
Clinton News-Record